Hiring New Orleans residents to work on hurricane cleanup and rebuilding efforts in their hometown should become the federal government’s “highest priority,” Mayor Richard Daley asserted Friday.
“This is the opportunity to take them out of poverty,” Daley said. Steady paychecks for people are “crucial in this effort,” he said. “You’d better train some of these people immediately and get them there. . . . I don’t think they want charity. They don’t want public aid. They want a job.”
Daley spoke at a news conference where he highlighted assistance the city has provided to people who have come to Chicago after being uprooted by Hurricane Katrina.
As of Friday morning, more than 1,400 had been processed at the city’s welcome center at Fosco Park, 1313 S. Throop St., where a variety of social services are offered, and 119 families had been placed in private homes and apartments, public housing and other temporary housing.
“The CTA has distributed 857 30-day transit passes, and we have provided 124 evacuees with medical prescriptions and tetanus shots,” Daley said.
Rev. Jesse Jackson sounded a similar note Friday. Rather than being relocated to faraway states, such as Illinois, hurricane victims should be kept closer to their hometowns so they can be a part of the rebuilding process, he told the Tribune’s editorial board.
“We must rebuild the coast. I mean, New Orleans functioned as a trading center, as an energy center. . . . We must rebuild the Gulf Coast, specifically we must rebuild New Orleans,” he said. “And people who have lived there ought to have the first option on those jobs and contracts to help rebuild where they have lived.”
Jackson said he has suggested that New Orleans residents should be relocated to unused military bases in Louisiana but has met opposition to the idea.
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“I’m not quite sure why there’s a resistance to using underused or unused military bases,” he said. “Only thing I can think of is the people in those regions don’t want these New Orleans people coming in their region of the state.”
Jackson also criticized the federal government’s latest $51.8 billion emergency spending package, saying the wording in the plan discriminates against local businesses by not allowing them to compete for contracts in reconstruction plans.
“The people who have lived there should have first priority on the jobs,” he said. “But the way this was rushed through [Thursday], they’re left out.”
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